Semaj McLeod
Always marching to the beat of his own drum, Kanye West has found new success in a situation that most artists would consider detrimental. Turns out Billboard not charting DONDA was actually part of his plot all along.
Recently, Billboard announced that DONDA 2, Kanye’s latest album, would not meet the requirements necessary to place on the charts. This is due to Kanye’s recent release being exclusive to his $200 Stem Player, a glaring red flag in the eyes of Billboard which denounces eligibility of albums sold in “merch bundles” or, more specifically, albums sold with products attached.
According to West, that was the original intention. “Big win for the kid We can no longer be counted or judged We won we won we won we won,” Kanye wrote in an Instagram post earlier today. “We make my own systems We set our own value aaaand yesterdays price is not todays price baaaaabeeeee!!!!!” he added.
Looking from a bird’s eye view like Cordae, Kanye won big. West self reported on Instagram on Febuary 18th that he racked up $1.3 million in sales on the stem player in less than a single day, and the item itself netting $8.6 million in just 24 hours after the announcement of the album’s exclusivity to the piece of YZY tech. All that money went directly into Kanye’s coffers.
Kanye also succeeded in exposing Billboard’s antiquated charting rules, which will continue to prove obsolete as artists like Snoop Dogg choose non-traditional distribution outside of the streaming giants.
With the Stem player being a fairly new concept, Billboard has vowed to “monitor the situation” as it relates to chart eligibility. However, Kanye’s desire is to disrupt and dismantle the system that he says oppresses artists. “Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes, it’s time to free music from this oppressive system,” Kanye West expressed. ”It’s time to take control and build our own.”
In the end, this marks a major shift for not only artists, but the music industry in general. When DONDA 1 was released, the project became Kanye’s fastest album to reach a billion streams on Spotify and it topped the Billboard 200’s chart with the highest single-week release in 2021 at that point. Fast forward eight months later, Kanye now forces the hand of streaming services to either pay up or miss out on the music.
